Moving the hands of the clock ahead for daylight-saving time saves energy, puts a crimp in crime and saves lives on the road, studies show.

Skeptics say that the spring change makes people tired and causes even more car crashes, and it doesn’t save any energy.

On March 11, the federal government will involve Americans in a great experiment in time – trying to figure out whether there’s a benefit to adding a month to daylight-saving time.

The Energy Act of 2005 mandated a new daylight-saving time period for the first time in 21 years – moving the start ahead three weeks, to the second Sunday in March. Clocks will be turned back a week later in the fall, to the first Sunday in November.

More daylight during the evening hours will save the country 1 percent in energy costs, or about 100,000 barrels of oil a day, according to federal officials, citing a 32-year-old study.

Sanjay Ramchander, an associate professor of finance and real estate at Colorado State University, believes the savings will be negligible.

“Zero or close to zero,” he said. “If you look at the U.S. consumption, that’s 21 million barrels a day. If you think about 100,000, that’s one-half of 1 percent.”

People will transfer their energy use from the evening to the morning hours, he said.

“At least this will give researchers a ready-made experiment,” Ramchander said. “By the end of this year, we will know for sure.”

Federal officials also cited studies showing daylight-saving time reduced crime between 10 percent and 13 percent over three years in Washington, D.C. Also, when daylight- saving time was stretched into March in 1974, traffic fatalities nationwide decreased 0.7 percent from the previous year.

Still, time change has been resisted by religious groups, the state of Arizona, farmers and parents who don’t like sending their kids to school in the dark.

Airline companies told Congress the 2007 time shift would cost hundreds of millions of dollars in reworking schedules for international flights.

Microsoft, which says the change could cause minor inconveniences for its customers, has software available to remedy the situation.

Timothy Monk, a University of Pittsburgh psychology professor, said that every year, the change causes a condition similar to massive jet lag for the entire country.

“It takes much of the week after each of the time-zone changes for the biological clock to adjust,” he said. “After the spring change, people who usually woke up before the alarm needed the alarm.”

Studies have shown traffic crashes increase about 10 percent during the week after the change, he said.

David Prerau, author of a book about daylight-saving time called “Seize the Daylight,” said even a small energy saving makes the process worthwhile.

“Almost every study that has been done here and around the world has shown there has been a small saving in energy,” Prerau said. “All of that is valuable.”

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.